Analysis of a phase transition phenomenon in packet networks (Q2726728)

This paper gives an analysis of the multiplexing of variable bit rate traffic streams in a packet network with focus on encoded voice. In particular, the authors give asymptotics of the overflow probability in the combined packet/burst scale model. It is shown that there is a specific size of the buffer below which packet-scale effects are dominant, and above which burst-scale effects essentially determine the performance. Applying large deviations theory [\textit{A. Schwartz} and \textit{A. Weiss}, ``Large deviations for performance analysis. Queues, communications, and computing'' (1995; Zbl 0871.60021)] they show that the overflow probability decays exponentially as the number of sources increases. A numerical example (multiplexing of voice streams) confirms the accuracy of these approximations.